Act 4, scenes 3–5

Act 4, scenes 3–5

Act 4, scenes 3–5

Act 4, scenes 3–5

Act 4, scenes 3–5

Summary: Act 4, scene 3

Kent, still disguised as an ordinary serving man, speaks
with a gentleman in the French camp near Dover. The gentleman tells
Kent that the king of France landed with his troops but quickly
departed to deal with a problem at home. Kent’s letters have been
brought to Cordelia, who is now the queen of France and who has
been left in charge of the army. Kent questions the gentleman about
Cordelia’s reaction to the letters, and the gentleman gives a moving
account of Cordelia’s sorrow upon reading about her father’s mistreatment.

Kent tells the gentleman that Lear, who now wavers unpredictably
between sanity and madness, has also arrived safely in Dover. Lear,
however, refuses to see Cordelia because he is ashamed of the way
he treated her. The gentleman informs Kent that the armies of both
Albany and the late Cornwall are on the march, presumably to fight
against the French troops.

Summary: Act 4, scene 4

Cordelia enters, leading her soldiers. Lear has hidden
from her in the cornfields, draping himself in weeds and flowers
and singing madly to himself. Cordelia sends one hundred of her
soldiers to find Lear and bring him back. She consults with a doctor
about Lear’s chances for recovering his sanity. The doctor tells
her that what Lear most needs is sleep and that there are medicines
that can make him sleep. A messenger brings Cordelia the news that
the British armies of Cornwall and Albany are marching toward them.
Cordelia expected this news, and her army stands ready to fight.

Summary: Act 4, scene 5

Back at Gloucester’s castle, Oswald tells Regan that Albany’s
army has set out, although Albany has been dragging his feet about
the expedition. It seems that Goneril is a “better soldier” than
Albany (4.5.4). Regan is extremely curious
about the letter that Oswald carries from Goneril to Edmund, but
Oswald refuses to show it to her. Regan guesses that the letter
concerns Goneril’s love affair with Edmund, and she tells Oswald
plainly that she wants Edmund for herself. Regan reveals that she
has already spoken with Edmund about this possibility; it would
be more appropriate for Edmund to get involved with her, now a widow,
than with Goneril, with whom such involvement would constitute adultery.
She gives Oswald a token or a letter (the text doesn’t specify which)
to deliver to Edmund, whenever he may find him. Finally, she promises
Oswald a reward if he can find and kill Gloucester.

Analysis: Act 4, scenes 3–5

In these scenes, we see Cordelia for the first time since
Lear banished her in Act 1, scene 1. The words the gentleman uses
to describe Cordelia to Kent seem to present her as a combination
idealized female beauty and quasi-religious savior figure. The gentleman
uses the language of love poetry to describe her beauty—her lips
are “ripe,” the tears in her eyes are “as pearls from diamonds dropped,”
and her “smiles and tears” are like the paradoxically coexisting
“sunshine and rain” (4.3.17–21). But the
gentleman also describes Cordelia in language that might be used
to speak of a holy angel or the Virgin Mary herself: he says that,
as she wiped away her tears, “she shook / The holy water from her
heavenly eyes” (4.3.28–29). Cordelia’s
great love for her father, which contrasts sharply with Goneril and Regan’s cruelty, elevates her to the level of reverence.

The strength of Cordelia’s daughterly love is reinforced
in Act 4, scene 4, when Cordelia orders her people to seek out
and help her father. We learn that the main reason for the French
invasion of England is Cordelia’s desire to help Lear: “great France
/ My mourning and importuned tears hath pitied,” she says (4.4.26–27).
The king of France, her husband, took pity on her grief and allowed
the invasion in an effort to help restore Lear to the throne. When
Cordelia proclaims that she is motivated not by ambition but by
“love, dear love, and our aged father’s right,” we are reminded
of how badly Lear treated her at the beginning of the play (4.4.29).
Her virtue and devotion is manifest in her willingness to forgive
her father for his awful behavior. At one point, she declares, “O
dear father, / It is thy business that I go about” (4.4.24–25),
echoing a biblical passage in which Christ says, “I must go about
my father’s business” (Luke 2:49). This allusion
reinforces Cordelia’s piety and purity and consciously links her
to Jesus Christ, who, of course, was a martyr to love, just as Cordelia
becomes at the play’s close.